Disgraced cloning scientist Hwang Woo-suk lost a legal dispute he started against Jeju National University Professor Park Se-phil, according to the prosecution, Tuesday.

The Seoul Eastern District Prosecutor's Office said Park has recently been cleared of suspicions after being sued by Hwang for alleged embezzlement and threats. Consequently, the legal dispute ended without entering a court battle.

Since 2012, Hwang has pushed for a research project to bring back the mammoth, which went extinct over 4,000 years ago. Hwang and his team have worked with Russian researchers to collect somatic cells of frozen mammoths in Siberia, and clone them to produce an embryo. The goal was to implant the cloned embryo in an elephant surrogate mother to ultimately restore the species to life.

Mammoths lived in the Pleistocene age and became extinct at the end of the last glacial epoch. The mammal was covered with long body hair and had a pair of 5-meter-long tusks.

Hwang's project, however, made slow progress and remained fruitless so he handed over the mammoth somatic cells to Park and his team this year.

The dispute between the two scientists started when Park claimed he has succeeded in restoring the cells and differentiating them, which is considered one of the most difficult parts in cloning a mammoth.

Park argued his team holds the rights over the research results because the success was possible thanks to their exclusive techniques. He also said Hwang provided the mammoth somatic cells without specific terms and conditions over the research results.

Hwang, on the other hand, insisted he clearly holds the ownership of the frozen mammoth cells collected from Siberia. He also said the research results should belong to him because he allowed Park and his team to try cultivating the cells.

The two sides have failed to reach an agreement. Consequently, Hwang filed a complaint at the prosecution against Park as well as Chung Hyung-min of Konkuk University's lab of stem cell biology and Mirae Cell Bio CEO Kim Eun-young.

Meanwhile, Hwang has also been suspected of illegally bringing the frozen mammoth cells into Korea without reporting to the quarantine authority here. Hwang has reportedly said during the prosecution investigation that the allegation is "groundless."